Well, she would congratulate them! If Honora could forget a shattered heart so soon, if Wander could take it on such easy terms, they were entitled to congratulations of a sort. And if they were killed some frantic night,—were blown to pieces with their ruined home, and so reached together whatever lies beyond this life,—why, then, they were to be congratulated, indeed! Or if they evaded their enemies and swung their endangered craft into the smooth stream of life, still congratulations were to be theirs.

She confessed to herself that she would rather be in that lonely beleaguered house facing death with Karl Wander than be the recipient of the greatest honor or the participant in the utmost gayety that life could offer.

That the fact was fantastic made it none the less a fact.

* * * * *

Should she write to Honora: "I congratulate you?"

Or should she wire Karl?

She got out his letters, and his words were as a fresh wind blowing over her spirit. She realized afresh how this man, seen but once, known only through the medium of infrequent letters, had invigorated her. What had he not taught her of compassion, of "the glory of the commonplace," of duty eagerly fulfilled, of the abounding joy of life—even in life shadowed by care or sickness or poverty?

No, she would write them nothing. They were her friends in fullness of sympathy. They, like herself, were of those to whom each day and night is a privilege, to whom sorrow is an enrichment, delight an unfoldment, opposition a spur. They were of the company of those who dared to speak the truth, who breathed deep, who partook of the banquet of life without fear.

She had seen Honora in the worst hour of tribulation that can come to a good woman, and she knew she had arisen from her overthrow, stronger for the trial; now Karl was battling, and he had cried out to her in his pain—his shame of defeat. But it would not be his extinction. She was sure of that. They might, among them, slay his body, but she could not read his letters, so full of valiant contrasts, and doubt that his spirit must withstand all adversaries.

No, sardonic with these two she could never be. Like that poor Elena, she might have mistaken Wander's meanings. He was a man of too elaborate gestures; something grandiose, inherently his, made him enact the drama of life with too much fervor. It was easy, Honora had insinuated, for a woman to mistake him!

Kate gripped her two strong hands together and clasped them about her head in the first attitude of despair in which she ever had indulged in her life. She was ashamed! Honora had said there was nothing to be ashamed of in love. But Kate would not call this meeting of her spirit with Karl's by that name. She had no idea whether it was love or not. On the whole, she preferred to think that it was not. But when they faced each other, their glances had met. When they had parted, their thoughts had bridged the space. When she dreamed, she fancied that she was mounting great solitary peaks with him to look at sunsets that blazed like the end of the world; or that he and she were strong-winged birds seeking the crags of the Andes. What girl's folly! The time had come to put such vagrant dreams from her and to become a woman, indeed.

Ray telephoned that he was home.

"Come up this evening, then," commanded Kate.

Then, not being as courageous as her word, she wept brokenly for her mother—the mother who could, at best, have given her but such indeterminate advice.



XXIII

As she heard Ray coming up the stairs, she tossed some more wood on the fire and lighted the candles in her Russian candlesticks.

"It's what any silly girl would do!" she admitted to herself disgustedly.

Well, there was his rap on the foolish imitation Warwick knocker. Kate flung wide the door. He stood in the dim light of the hall, hesitating, it would seem, to enter upon the evening's drama. Tall, graceful as always, with a magnetic force behind his languor, he impressed Kate as a man whom few women would be able to resist; whom, indeed, it was a sort of folly, perhaps even an impiety, to cast out of one's life.

"Kate!" he said, "Kate!" The whole challenge of love was in the accent.

But she held him off with the first method of opposition she could devise.

"My name!" she admitted gayly. "I used to think I didn't like it, but I do."

He came in and swung to the door behind him, flinging his coat and hat upon a chair.

"Do you mean you like to hear me say it?" he demanded. He stood by the fire which had begun to leap and crackle, drawing off his gloves with a decisive gesture.

She saw that she was not going to be able to put him off. The hour had struck. So she faced him bravely.

"Sit down, Ray," she said.

He looked at her a moment as if measuring the value of this courtesy.

"Thank you," he said, almost resentfully, as he sank into the chair she placed for him.

So they sat together before the fire gravely, like old married people, as Kate could not help noticing. Yet they were combatants; not as a married couple might have been, furtively and miserably, but with a frank, almost an exhilarating, sense of equally matched strength, and of their chance to conduct their struggle in the open.

"It's come to this, Kate," he said at length. "Either I must have your promise or I stay away entirely."

"I don't believe you need to do either," she retorted with the exasperating manner of an elder sister. "It's an obsession with you, that's all."

"What man thinks he needs, he does need," Ray responded sententiously. "It appears to me that without you I shall be a lost man. I mean precisely what I say. You wouldn't like me to give out that fact in an hysterical manner, and I don't see that I need to. I make the statement as I would make any other, and I expect to be believed, because I'm a truth-telling person. The fairest scene in the world or the most interesting circumstance becomes meaningless to me if you are not included in it. It isn't alone that you are my sweetheart—the lady of my dreams. It's much more than that. Sometimes when I'm with you I feel like a boy with his mother, safe from all the dreadful things that might happen to a child. Sometimes you seem like a sister, so really kind and so outwardly provoking. Often you are my comrade, and we are completely congenial, neuter entities. The thing is we have a satisfaction when we are together that we never could apart. There it is, Kate, the fact we can't get around. We're happier together than we are apart!"

He seemed to hold the theory up in the air as if it were a shining jewel, and to expect her to look at it till it dazzled her. But her voice was dull as she said: "I know, Ray. I know—now—but shall we stay so?"

"Why shouldn't we, woman? There's every reason to suppose that we'd grow happier. We want each other. More than that, we need each other. With me, it's such a deep need that it reaches to the very roots of my being. It's my groundwork, my foundation stone. I don't know how to put it to make you realize—"

He caught a quizzical smile on her face, and after a moment of bewilderment he leaped from his chair and came toward her.

"God!" he half breathed, "why do I waste time talking?"

He had done what her look challenged him to do,—had substituted action for words,—yet now, as he stretched out his arms to her, she held him off, fearful that she would find herself weeping on his breast. It would be sweet to do it—like getting home after a long voyage. But dizzily, with a stark clinging to a rock of integrity in herself, she fought him off, more with her militant spirit than with her outspread, protesting hands.

"No, no," she cried. "Don't hypnotize me, Ray! Leave me my judgment, leave me my reason. If it's a partnership we're to enter into, I ought to know the terms."

"The terms, Kate? Why, I'll love you as long as I live; I'll treasure you as the most precious thing in all the world."

"And the winds of heaven shall not be allowed to visit my cheek too roughly," she managed to say tantalizingly.

He paused, perplexed.

"I know I bewilder you, dear man," she said. "But this is the point: I don't want to be protected. I mean I don't want to be made dependent; I don't want my interpretations of life at second-hand. I object to having life filter through anybody else to me; I want it, you see, on my own account."

"Why, Kate!" It wasn't precisely a protest. He seemed rather to reproach her for hindering the onward sweep of their happiness—for opposing him with her ideas when they might together have attained a beautiful emotional climax.

"I couldn't stand it," she went on, lifting her eyes to his, "to be given permission to do this, that, or the other thing; or to be put on an allowance; or made to ask a favor—"

He sank down in his chair and folded across his breast the arms whose embrace she had not claimed.

"You seem to mean," he said, "that you don't want to be a wife. You prefer your independence to love."

"I want both," Kate declared, rising and standing before him. "I want the most glorious and abounding love woman ever had. I want so much of it that it never could be computed or measured—so much it will lift me up above anything that I now am or that I know, and make me stronger and freer and braver."

"Well, that's what your love would do for me," broke in McCrea. "That's what the love of a good woman is expected to do for a man."

"Of course," cried Kate; "but is that what the love of a good man is expected to do for a woman? Or is it expected to reconcile her to obscurity, to the dimming of her personality, and to the endless petty sacrifices that ought to shame her—and don't—those immoral sacrifices about which she has contrived to throw so many deceiving, iridescent mists of religion? Oh, yes, we are hypnotized into our foolish state of dependence easily enough! I know that. The mating instinct drugs us. I suppose the unborn generations reach out their shadowy multitudinous hands and drag us to our destiny!"

"What a woman you are! How you put things!" He tried but failed to keep the offended look from his face, and Kate knew perfectly well how hard he was striving not to think her indelicate. But she went on regardlessly.

"You think that's the very thing I ought to want to be my destiny? Well, perhaps I do. I want children—of course, I want them."

She stopped for a moment because she saw him flushing with embarrassment. Yet she couldn't apologize, and, anyway, an apology would avail nothing. If he thought her unwomanly because she talked about her woman's life,—the very life to which he was inviting her,—nothing she could say would change his mind. It wasn't a case for argument. She walked over to the fire and warmed her nervous hands at it.

"I'm sorry, Ray," she said finally.

"Sorry?"

"Sorry that I'm not the tender, trusting, maiden-creature who could fall trembling in your arms and love you forever, no matter what you did, and lie to you and for you the way good wives do. But I'm not—and, oh, I wish I were—or else—"

"Yes, Kate—what?"

"Or else that you were the kind of a man I need, the mate I'm looking for!"

"But, Kate, I protest that I am. I love you. Isn't that enough? I'm not worthy of you, maybe. Yet if trying to earn you by being loyal makes me worthy, then I am. Don't say no to me, Kate. It will shatter me—like an earthquake. And I believe you'll regret it, too. We can make each other happy. I feel it! I'd stake my life on it. Wait—"

He arose and paced the floor back and forth.

"Do you remember the lines from Tennyson's 'Princess' where the Prince pleads with Ida? I thought I could repeat them, but I'm afraid I'll mar them. I don't want to do that; they're too applicable to my case."

He knew where she kept her Tennyson, and he found the volume and the page, and when he had handed the book to her, he snatched his coat and hat.

"I'm coming for my answer a week from to-night," he said. "For God's sake, girl, don't make a mistake. Life's so short that it ought to be happy. At best I'll only be able to live with you a few decades, and I'd like it to be centuries."

He had not meant to do it, she could see, but suddenly he came to her, and leaning above her burned his kisses upon her eyes. Then he flung himself out of the room, and by the light of her guttering candles she read:—

"Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height. What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang). In height and cold, the splendor of the hills? But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine, To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; And come, for Love is of the valley, come thou down And find him; by the happy threshold, he Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, Or red with spirted purple of the vats, Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk With Death and Morning on the Silver Horns, Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, Nor find him dropped upon the firths of ice, That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls To roll the torrent out of dusky doors; But follow; let the torrent dance thee down To find him in the valley; let the wild Lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, That like a broken purpose waste in air; So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth Arise to thee; the children call, and I Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees."

She read it twice, soothed by its vague loveliness. She could hear, however, only the sound of the suburban trains crashing by in the distance, and the honking of the machines in the Plaisance. None of those spirit sounds of which Ray had dreamed penetrated through her vigorous materialism. But still, she knew that she was lonely; she knew Ray's going left a gray vacancy.

"I can't think it out," she said at last. "I'll go to sleep. Perhaps there—"

But neither voices nor visions came to her in sleep. She awoke the next morning as unillumined as when she went to her bed. And as she dressed and thought of the full day before her, she was indefinably glad that she was under no obligations to consult any one about her programme, either of work or play.



XXIV

Kate had dreaded the expected solitude of the next night, and it was a relief to her when Marna Fitzgerald telephoned that she had been sent opera-tickets by one of her old friends in the opera company, and that she wanted Kate to go with her.

"George offers to stay home with the baby," she said. "So come over, dear, and have dinner with us; that will give you a chance to see George. Then you and I will go to the opera by our two independent selves. I know you don't mind going home alone. 'Butterfly' is on, you know—Farrar sings."

She said it without faltering, Kate noticed, as she gave her enthusiastic acceptance, and when she had put down the telephone, she actually clapped her hands at the fortitude of the little woman she had once thought such a hummingbird—and a hummingbird with that one last added glory, a voice. Marna had been able to put her dreams behind her; why should not her example be cheerfully followed?

When Kate reached the little apartment looking on Garfield Park, she entered an atmosphere in which, as she had long since proved, there appeared to be no room for regret. Marna had, of course, prepared the dinner with her own hands.

"I whipped up some mayonnaise," she said. "You remember how Schumann-Heink used to like my mayonnaise? And she knows good cooking when she tastes it, doesn't she? I've trifle for desert, too."

"But it must have taken you all day, dear, to get up a dinner like that," protested Kate, kissing the flushed face of her friend.

"It took up the intervals," smiled Marna. "You see, my days are made up of taking care of baby, and of intervals. How fetching that black velvet bodice is, Kate. I didn't know you had a low one."

"Low and high," said Kate. "That's the way we fool 'em—make 'em think we have a wardrobe. Me—I'm glad I'm going to the opera. How good of you to think of me! So few do—at least in the way I want them to."

Marna threw her a quick glance.

"Ray?" she asked with a world of insinuation.

To Kate's disgust, her eyes flushed with hot tears.

"He's waiting to know," she answered. "But I—I don't think I'm going to be able—"

"Oh, Kate!" cried Marna in despair. "How can you feel that way? Just think—just think—" she didn't finish her sentence.

Instead, she seized little George and began undressing him, her hands lingering over the firm roundness of his body. He seemed to be anything but sleepy, and when his mother passed him over to her guest, Kate let him clutch her fingers with those tenacious little hands which looked like rose-leaves and clung like briers. Marna went out of the room to prepare his bedtime bottle, and Kate took advantage of being alone with him to experiment in those joys which his mother had with difficulty refrained from descanting upon. She kissed him in the back of the neck, and again where his golden curls met his brow—a brow the color of a rose crystal. A delicious, indescribable baby odor came up from him, composed of perfumed breath, of clean flannels, and of general adorability. Suddenly, not knowing she was going to do it, Kate snatched him to her breast, and held him strained to her while he nestled there, eager and completely happy, and over the woman who could not make up her mind about life and her part in it, there swept, in wave after wave, like the south wind blowing over the bleak hills, billows of warm emotion. Her very finger-tips tingled; soft, wistful, delightful tears flooded her eyes. Her bosom seemed to lift as the tide lifts to the moon. She found herself murmuring inarticulate, melodious nothings. It was a moment of realization. She was learning what joys could be hers if only—

Marna came back into the room and took the baby from Kate's trembling hands.

"Why, dear, you're not afraid of him, are you?" his mother asked reproachfully.

Kate made no answer, but, dropping a farewell kiss in the crinkly palm of one dimpled hand, she went out to the kitchen, found an apron, and began drawing the water for dinner and dropping Marna's mayonnaise on the salad. She must, however, have been sitting for several minutes in the baby's high chair, staring unseeingly at the wall, when the buzzing of the indicator brought her to her feet.

"It's George!" cried Marna; and tossing baby and bottle into the cradle, she ran to the door.

Kate hit the kitchen table sharply with a clenched hand. What was there in the return of a perfectly ordinary man to his home that should cause such excitement in a creature of flame and dew like Marna?

"Marna with the trees' life In her veins a-stir! Marna of the aspen heart—"

George came into the kitchen with both hands outstretched.

"Well, it's good to see you here," he declared. "Why don't you come oftener? You make Marna so happy."

That proved her worthy; she made Marna happy! Of what greater use could any person be in this world? George retired to prepare for dinner, and Marna to settle the baby for the night, and Kate went on with the preparations for the meal, while her thoughts revolved like a Catherine wheel.

There were the chops yet to cook, for George liked them blazing from the broiler, and there was the black coffee to set over. This latter was to fortify George at his post, for it was agreed that he was not to sleep lest he should fail to awaken at the need and demand of the beloved potentate in the cradle; and Marna now needed a little stimulant if she was to keep comfortably awake during a long evening—she who used to light the little lamps in the windows of her mind sometime after midnight.

They had one of those exclamatory dinners where every one talked about the incomparable quality of the cooking. The potatoes were after a new recipe,—something Spanish,—and they tasted deliciously and smelled as if assailing an Andalusian heaven. The salad was piquante; the trifle vivacious; Kate's bonbons were regarded as unique, and as for the coffee, it provoked Marna to quote the appreciative Talleyrand:—

"Noir comme le diable, Chaud comme l'enfer, Pur comme un ange, Doux comme l'amour."

Other folk might think that Marna had "dropped out," but Kate could see it written across the heavens in letters of fire that neither George nor Marna thought so. They regarded their table as witty, as blessed in such a guest as Kate, as abounding in desirable food, as being, indeed, all that a dinner-table should be. They had the effect of shutting out a world which clamored to participate in their pleasures, and looked on themselves as being not forgotten, but too selfish in keeping to themselves. It kept little streams of mirth purling through Kate's soul, and at each jest or supposed brilliancy she laughed twice—once with them and once at them. But they were unsuspicious—her friends. They were secretly sorry for her, that was all.

After dinner there was Marna to dress.

"Naturally I haven't thought much about evening clothes since I was married," she said to Kate. "I don't see what I'm to put on unless it's my immemorial gold-of-ophir satin." She looked rather dubious, and Kate couldn't help wondering why she hadn't made a decision before this. Marna caught the expression in her eyes.

"Oh, yes, I know I ought to have seen to things, but you don't know what it is, mavourneen, to do all your own work and care for a baby. It makes everything you do so staccato! And, oh, Kate, I do get so tired! My feet ache as if they'd come off, and sometimes my back aches so I just lie on the floor and roll and groan. Of course, George doesn't know. He'd insist on our having a servant, and we can't begin to afford that. It isn't the wages alone; it's the waste and breakage and all."

She said this solemnly, and Kate could not conceal a smile at her "daughter of the air" using these time-worn domestic plaints.

"You ought to lie down and sleep every day, Marna. Wouldn't that help?"

"That's what George is always saying. He thinks I ought to sleep while the baby is taking his nap. But, mercy me, I just look forward to that time to get my work done."

She turned her eager, weary face toward Kate, and her friend marked the delicacy in it which comes with maternity. It was pallid and rather pinched; the lips hung a trifle too loosely; the veins at the temples showed blue and full. Kate couldn't beat down the vision that would rise before her eyes of the Marna she had known in the old days, who had arisen at noon, coming forth from her chamber like Deirdre, fresh with the freshness of pagan delight. She remembered the crowd that had followed in her train, the manner in which people had looked after her on the street, and the little furore she had invariably awakened when she entered a shop or tea-room. As Marna shook out the gold-of-ophir satin, dimmed now and definitely out of date, there surged up in her friend a rebellion against Marna's complete acquiescence in the present scheme of things. But Marna slipped cheerfully into her gown.

"I shall keep my cloak on while we go down the aisle," she declared. "Nobody notices what one has on when one is safely seated. Particularly," she added, with one of her old-time flashes, "if one's neck is not half bad. Now I'm ready to be fastened, mavourneen. Dear me, it is rather tight, isn't it? But never mind that. Get the hooks together somehow. I'll hold my breath. Now, see, with this scarf about me, I shan't look such a terrible dowd, shall I? Only my gloves are unmistakably shabby and not any too clean, either. George won't let me use gasoline, you know, and it takes both money and thought to get them to the cleaners. Do you remember the boxes of long white gloves I used to have in the days when tante Barsaloux was my fairy godmother? Gloves were an immaterial incident then. 'Nevermore, nevermore,' as our friend the raven remarked. Come, we'll go. I won't wear my old opera cloak in the street-car; that would be too absurd, especially now that the bullion on it has tarnished. That long black coat of mine is just the thing—equally appropriate for market, mass, or levee. Oh, George, dear, good-bye! Good-bye, you sweetheart. I hate to leave you, truly I do. And I do hope and pray the baby won't wake. If he does—"

"Come along, Marna," commanded Kate. "We mustn't miss that next car."

* * * * *

They barely were in their seats when the lights went up, and before them glittered the Auditorium, that vast and noble audience chamber identified with innumerable hours of artistic satisfaction. The receding arches of the ceiling glittered like incandescent nebulae; the pictured procession upon the proscenium arch spoke of the march of ideas—of the passionate onflow of man's dreams—of whatever he has held beautiful and good.

Kate yielded herself over to the deep and happy sense of completion which this vast chamber always gave her, and while she and Marna sat there, silent, friendly, receptive, she felt her cares and frets slipping from her, and guessed that the drag of Mama's innumerable petty responsibilities was disappearing, too. For here was the pride of life—the power of man expressed in architecture, and in the high entrancement of music. The rich folds of the great curtain satisfied her, the innumerable lights enchanted her, and the loveliness of the women in their fairest gowns and their jewels added one more element to that indescribable thing, compacted of so many elements,—all artificial, all curiously and brightly related,—which the civilized world calls opera, and in which man rejoices with an inconsistent and more or less indefensible joy.

The lights dimmed; the curtain parted; the heights above Nagasaki were revealed. Below lay the city in purple haze; beyond dreamed the harbor where the battleships, the merchantmen and the little fishing-boats rode. The impossible, absurd, exquisite music-play of "Madame Butterfly" had begun.

Oh, the music that went whither it would, like wind or woman's hopes; that lifted like the song of a bird and sank like the whisper of waves. Vague as reverie, fitful as thought, yearning as frustrate love, it fluttered about them.

"The new music," whispered Marna.

"Like flame leaping and dying," responded Kate.

They did not realize the passage of time. They passed from chamber to chamber in that gleaming house of song.

"This was the best of all to me," breathed Marna, as Farrar's voice took up the first notes of that incomparable song of woven hopes and fears, "Some Day He'll Come." The wild cadences of the singer's voice, inarticulate, of universal appeal, like the cry of a lost child or the bleating of a lamb on a windy hill,—were they mere singing? Or were they singing at all? Yes, the new singing, where music and drama insistently meet.

The tale, heart-breaking for beauty and for pathos, neared its close. Oh, the little heart of flame expiring at its loveliest! Oh, the loyal feet that waited—eager to run on love's errands—till dawn brought the sight of faded flowers, the suddenly bleak apartment, the unpressed couch! Then the brave, swift flight of the spirit's wings to other altitudes, above pain and shame! And like love and sorrow, refined to a poignant essence, still the music brooded and cried and aspired.

What visions arose in Marna's brain, Kate wondered, quivering with vicarious anguish. Glancing down at her companion's small, close-clasped hands, she thought of their almost ceaseless toil in those commonplace rooms which she called home, and for the two in it—the ordinary man, the usual baby. And she might have had all this brightness, this celebrity, this splendid reward for high labor!

The curtain closed on the last act,—on the little dead Cio-Cio-San,—and the people stood on their feet to call Farrar, giving her unstintedly of their bravas. Kate and Marna stood with the others, but they were silent. There were large, glistening tears on Marna's cheeks, and Kate refrained from adding to her silent singing-bird's distress by one word of appreciation of the evening's pleasure; but as they moved down the thronged aisle together, she caught Marna's hand in her own, and felt her fingers close about it tenaciously.

Outside a bitter wind was blowing, and with such purpose that it had cleared the sky of the day's murk so that countless stars glittered with unwonted brilliancy from a purple-black heaven. Crowded before the entrance were the motors, pouring on in a steady stream, their lamps half dazzling the pedestrians as they struggled against the wind that roared between the high buildings.

Though Marna was to take the Madison Street car, they could not resist the temptation to turn upon the boulevard where the scene was even more exhilarating. The high standing lights that guarded the great drive offered a long and dazzling vista, and between them, sweeping steadily on, were the motor-cars. Laughing, talking, shivering, the people hastened along—the men of fashion stimulated and alert, their women splendid in furs and cloaks of velvet while they waited for their conveyances; by them tripped the music students, who had been incomparably happy in the highest balcony, and who now cringed before the penetrating cold; among them marched sedately the phalanx of middle-class people who permitted themselves an opera or two a year, and who walked sedately, carrying their musical feast with a certain sense of indigestion;—all moved along together, thronging the wide pavement. The restaurants were awaiting those who had the courage for further dissipation; the suburban trains had arranged their schedules to convenience the crowd; and the lights burned low in the hallways of mansions, or apartments, or neat outlying houses, awaiting the return of these adventurers into another world—the world of music. All would talk of Farrar. Not alone that night, nor that week, but always, as long as they lived, at intervals, when they were happy, when their thoughts were uplifted, they would talk of her. And it might have been Marna Cartan instead of Geraldine Farrar of whom they spoke!

"Marna of the far quest" might have made this "flight unhazarded"; might have been the core of all this fine excitement. But she had put herself out of it. She had sold herself for a price—the usual price. Kate would not go so far as to say that a birthright had been sold for a mess of pottage, but Ray McCrea's stock was far below par at that moment. Yet Ray, as she admitted, would not doom her to a life of monotony and heavy toil. With him she would have the free and useful, the amusing and excursive life of an American woman married to a man of wealth. No, her programme would not be a petty one—and yet—

"Do take a cab, Marna," she urged. "My treat! Please."

"No, no," said Marna in a strained voice. "I'll not do that. A five-cent ride in the car will take me almost to my door; and besides the cars are warm, which is an advantage."

It was understood tacitly that Kate was the protector, and the one who wouldn't mind being on the street alone. They had but a moment to wait for Marna's car, but in that moment Kate was thinking how terrible it would be for Marna, in her worn evening gown, to be crowded into that common conveyance and tormented with those futile regrets which must be her so numerous companions.

She was not surprised when Marna snatched her hand, crying:—

"Oh, Kate!"

"Yes, yes, I know," murmured Kate soothingly.

"No, you don't," retorted Marna. "How can you? It's—it's the milk."

There was a catch in her voice.

"The milk!" echoed Kate blankly. "What milk? I thought—"

"Oh, I know," Marna cried impatiently. "You thought I was worrying about that old opera, and that I wanted to be up there behind that screen stabbing myself. Well, of course, knowing the score so well, and having hoped once to do so much with it, the notes did rather try to jump out of my throat. But, goodness, what does all that matter? It's the baby's milk that I'm carrying on about. I don't believe I told George to warm it." Her voice ceased in a wail.

The car swung around the corner, and Kate half lifted Marna up the huge step, and saw her go reeling down the aisle as the cumbersome vehicle lurched forward. Then she turned her own steps toward the stairs of the elevated station.

"The milk!" she ejaculated with commingled tenderness and impatience. "Then that's why she didn't say anything about going behind the scenes. I thought it was because she couldn't endure the old surroundings and the pity of her associates of the opera-days. The milk! I wonder—"

What she wondered she did not precisely say; but more than one person on the crowded elevated train noticed that the handsome woman in black velvet (it really was velveteen, purchased at a bargain) had something on her mind.



XXV

Kate slept lightly that night. She had gone to bed with a sense of gentle happiness, which arose from the furtive conviction that she was going to surrender to Ray and to his point of view. He could take all the responsibility if he liked and she would follow the old instincts of woman and let the Causes of Righteousness with which she had allied herself contrive to get along without her. It was nothing, she told herself, but sheer egotism for her to suppose that she was necessary to their prosperity.

She half awoke many times, and each time she had a vague, sweet longing which refused to resolve itself into definite shape. But when the full morning came she knew it was Ray she wanted. She couldn't wait out the long week he had prescribed as a season of fasting and prayer before she gave her answer, and she was shamelessly glad when her superior, over there at the Settlement House, informed her that she would be required to go to a dance-hall at South Chicago that night—a terrible place, which might well have been called "The Girl Trap." This gave Kate a legitimate excuse to ask for Ray's company, because he had besought her not to go to such places at night without his escort.

"But ought I to be seeing you?" he asked over the telephone in answer to her request. "Wouldn't it be better for my cause if I stayed away?"

In spite of the fact that he laughed, she knew he was quite in earnest, and she wondered why he hadn't discerned her compliant mood from her intonations.

"But I had to mind you, hadn't I?" she sent back. "You said I mustn't go to such places without you."

From her tone she might have been the most betendriled feminine vine that ever wrapped a self-satisfied masculine oak.

"Oh, I'll come," he answered. "Of course I'll come. You knew you had only to give me the chance."

He was on time, impeccable, as always, in appearance. Kate was glad that he was as tall as she. She knew, down in her inner consciousness, that they made a fine appearance together, that they stepped off gallantly. It came to her that perhaps they were to be envied, and that they weren't—or at least that she wasn't—giving their good fortune its full valuation.

She told him about her dinner with the Fitzgeralds and about the opera, but she held back her discovery, so to speak, of the baby, and the episode of Marna's wistful tears when she heard the music, and her amazing volte-face at remembering the baby's feeding-time. She would have loved to spin out the story to him—she could have deepened the colors just enough to make it all very telling. But she wasn't willing to give away the reason for her changed mood. It was enough, after all, that he was aware of it, and that when he drew her hand within his arm he held it in a clasp that asserted his right to keep it.

They were happy to be in each other's company again. Kate had to admit it. For the moment it seemed to both of them that it didn't matter much where they went so long as they could go together. They rode out to South Chicago on the ill-smelling South Deering cars, crowded with men and women with foreign faces. One of the men trod on Kate's foot with his hobnailed shoe and gave an inarticulate grunt by way of apology.

"He's crushed it, hasn't he?" asked Ray anxiously, seeing the tears spring to her eyes. "What a brute!"

"Oh, it was an accident," Kate protested. "Any one might have done it."

"But anyone except that unspeakable Huniack would have done more than grunt!"

"I dare say he doesn't know English," Kate insisted. "He'll probably remember the incident longer and be sorrier about it than some who would have been able to make graceful apologies."

"Not he," declared Ray. "Don't you think it! Bless me, Kate, why you prefer these people to any others passes my comprehension. Can't you leave these people to work out their own salvation—which to my notion is the only way they ever can get it—and content yourself with your own kind and class?"

"Not variety enough," retorted Kate, feeling her tenderness evaporate and her tantalizing mood—her usual one when she was with Ray—come back. "Don't I know just what you, for example, are going to think and say about any given circumstances? Don't I know your enthusiasms and reactions as if I'd invented 'em?"

"Well, I know yours, too, but that's because I love you, not because you're like everybody else. I wish you were rather more like other women, Kate. I'd have an easier time."

"If we were married," said Kate, with that cheerful directness which showed how her sentimentality had taken flight, "you'd never give up till you'd made me precisely like Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Smith, and Mrs. Johnson. Men fall in love with women because they're different from other women, and then put in the first years of their married life trying to make them like everybody else. I've noticed, however, that when they've finished the job, they're so bored with the result that they go and look up another 'different' woman. Oh, I know!"

He couldn't say what he wished in reply because the car filled up just then with a party of young people bound for a dance in Russell Square. It always made Kate's heart glow to think of things like that—of what the city was trying to do for its people. These young people came from small, comfortable homes, quite capacious enough for happiness and self-respect, but not large enough for a dance. Very well; all that was needed was a simple request for the use of the field-house and they could have at their disposal a fine, airy hall, well-warmed and lighted, with an excellent floor, charming decorations, and a room where they might prepare their refreshments. All they had to pay for was the music. Proper chaperonage was required and the hall closed at midnight. Kate descanted on the beauties of the system till Ray yawned.

"Think how different it is at the dance-hall where we are going," she went on, not heeding his disinclination for the subject. "They'll keep it up till dawn and drink between every dance. There's not a party of the kind the whole winter through that doesn't see the steps of some young girl set toward destruction. Oh, I can't see why it isn't stopped! If women had the management of things, it would be, I can tell you. It would take about one day to do it."

"That's one of the reasons why the liquor men combine to kill suffrage," said Ray. "They know it will be a sorry day for them when the women get in. Positively, the women seem to think that's all there is to politics—some moral question; and the whole truth is they'd do a lot of damage to business with their slap-dash methods, as they'd learn to their cost. When they found their pin-money being cut down, they'd sing another tune, for they're the most reckless spenders in the world, American women are."

"They're the purchasing agents for the most extravagant nation in the world, if you like," Kate replied. "Men seem to think that shopping is a mere feminine diversion. They forget that it's what supports their business and supplies their homes. Not to speak of any place beyond our own town, think of the labor involved in buying food and clothing for the two million and a half human beings here in Chicago. It's no joke, I assure you."

"Joke!" echoed Ray. "A good deal of the shopping I've seen at my father's store seems to me to come under the head of vice. The look I've seen on some of those faces! It was ravaging greed, nothing less. Why, we had a sale the other day of cheap jewelry, salesmen's samples, and the women swarmed and snatched and glared like savages. I declare, when I saw them like that, so indecently eager for their trumpery ornaments, I said to myself that you'd only to scratch the civilized woman to get at the squaw any day."

Kate kept a leash on her tongue. She supposed it was inevitable that they should get back to the old quarrel. Deep down in Ray, she felt, was an unconquerable contempt for women. He made an exception of her because he loved her; because she drew him with the mysterious sex attraction. It was that, and not any sense of spiritual or intellectual approval of her, which made him set her apart as worthy of admiration and of his devoted service. If ever their lives were joined, she would be his treasure to be kept close in his personal casket,—with the key to the golden padlock in his pocket,—and he would all but say his prayers to her. But all that would not keep him from openly discountenancing her judgment before people. She could imagine him putting off a suggestion of hers with that patient married tone which husbands assume when they discover too much independent cerebration on the part of their wives.

"I couldn't stand that," she inwardly declared, as she let him think that he was assisting her from the car. "If any man ever used that patient tone to me, I'd murder him!"

She couldn't keep back her sardonic chuckle.

"What are you laughing at?" he asked irritatedly.

"At the mad world, master," she answered.

"Where is this dance-hall?" he demanded, as if he suspected her of concealing it.

The tone was precisely the "married" one she had been imagining, and she burst out with a laugh that made him stop and visibly wrap his dignity about him. Nothing was more evident than that he thought her silly. But as she paused, too, standing beneath the street-lamp, and he saw her with her nonchalant tilt of her head,—that handsome head poised on her strong, erect body,—her force and value were so impressed upon him that he had to retract. But she was provoking, no getting around that.

At that moment another sound than laughter cut the air—a terrible sound—the shriek of a tortured child. It rang out three times in quick succession, and Kate's blood curdled.

"Oh, oh," she gasped; "she's being beaten! Come, Ray."

"Mix up in some family mess and get slugged for my pains? Not I! But I'll call a policeman if you say."

"Oh, it might be too late! I'm a policeman, you know. Get the patrol wagon if you like. But I can't stand that—"

Once more that agonized scream! Kate flashed from him into the mesh of mean homes, standing three deep in each yard, flanking each other with only a narrow passage between, and was lost to him. He couldn't see where she had gone, but he knew that he must follow. He fell down a short flight of steps that led from the street to the lower level of the yard, and groped forward. He could hear people running, and when a large woman, draping her wrapper about her, floundered out of a basement door near him, he followed her. She seemed to know where to go. The squalid drama with the same actors evidently had been played before.

Mid-length of the building the woman turned up some stairs and came to a long hall which divided the front and rear stairs. At the end of it a light was burning, and Kate's voice was ringing out like that of an officer excoriating his delinquent troops.

"I'm glad you can't speak English," he heard her say, "for if you could I'd say things I'd be sorry for. I'd shrivel you up, you great brute. If you've got the devil in you, can't you take it out on some one else beside a little child? You're her father, are you? She has no mother, I suppose. Well, you 're under arrest, do you understand? Tell him, some of you who can talk English. He's to sit in that chair and never move from it till the patrol wagon comes. I shall care for the child myself, and she'll be placed where he can't treat her like that again. Poor little thing! Thank you, that's a good woman. Just hold her awhile and comfort her. I can see you've children of your own."

Ray found the courage at length to peer above the heads of the others in that miserable, crowded room. The dark faces of weary men and women, heavy with Old-World, inherited woe, showed in the gloom. The short, shaking man on the chair, dully contrite for his spasm of rage, was cringing before Kate, who stood there, amazingly tall among these low-statured beings. Never had she looked to Ray so like an eagle, so keen, so fierce, so fit for braving either sun or tenebrous cavern. She dominated them all; had them, who only partly understood what she said, at her command. She had thrown back her cloak, and the star of the Juvenile Court officer which she wore carried meaning to them. Though perhaps it had not needed that. Ray tried to think her theatrical, to be angry at her, but the chagrin of knowing that she had forgotten him, and was not caring about his opinion, scourged his criticisms back. She had lifted from the floor the stick with its leathern thong with which the man had castigated the tender body of his motherless child. She held it in her hand, looking at it with the angry aversion that she might have turned upon a venomous serpent. Then slowly, with unspeakable rebuke, she swung her gaze upon the wretch in the chair. For a moment she silently accused him. Then he dropped his head in his hands and sobbed. He seemed in his voiceless way to say that he, too, had been castigated by a million invisible thongs held in dead men's hands, and that his soul, like his child's body, was hideous with welts.

Kate turned to Ray.

"Is the patrol wagon on its way?" she inquired.

"I—I—didn't call it," he stammered.

"Please do," she said simply.

He went out of the room, silently raging, and was grateful that one of the men followed to show him the patrol box. He waited outside for the wagon to come, and when the officers brought out the shaking prisoner, he saw Kate with them carrying the child in her arms.

"I must go to the station," she said to Ray, in a matter-of-fact tone that put him far away from her. "So I'll say good-night. It wouldn't be pleasant for you to ride in the wagon, you know. I'll be quite all right. One of the officers will see me safe home. Anyway, I shall have to go to the dance-hall before the evening's over."

"Kate!" he protested.

"Oh, I know," she said to him apart softly while the others concerned themselves with assisting the blubbering Huniack into the wagon, "you think it isn't nice of me to be going around like this, saving babies from beatings and young girls from much worse. You think it isn't ladylike. But it's what the coming lady is either going to do or see done. It's a new idea, you understand, Ray. Quite different from the squaw idea, isn't it? Good-night!"

An officer stood at the door of the wagon waiting for her. He touched his hat and smiled at her in a comradely fashion, and she responded with as courteous a bow as she ever had made to Ray.

The wagon drove off.

"I've been given my answer," said Ray aloud. He wondered if he were more relieved or disappointed at the outcome. But really he could neither feel nor think reasonably. He went home in a tumult, dismayed at his own sufferings, and in no condition to realize that the old ideas and the new were at death grips in his consciousness.



XXVI

Karl Wander rode wearily up the hill on his black mare. Honora saw him coming and waved to him from the window. There was no one to put up his horse, and he drove her into the stables and fed her and spread her bed while Honora watched what he and she had laughingly termed "the outposts." For she believed she had need to be on guard, and she thanked heaven that all of the approaches to the house were in the open and that there was nothing nearer than the rather remote grove of pinon trees which could shelter any creeping enemy.

Wander came on at last to the house, making his way deliberately and scorning, it would seem, all chance of attack. But Honora's ears fairly reverberated with the pistol shot which did not come; the explosion which was now so long delayed. She ran to open the door for him and to drag him into the friendly kitchen, where, in the absence of any domestic help, she had spread their evening meal.

There was a look in his face which she had not seen there before—a look of quietude, of finality.

"Well?" she asked.

He flung his hat on a settle and sat down to loosen his leggings.

"They've gone," he said, "bag and baggage."

"The miners?"

"Yes, left this afternoon—confiscated some trains and made the crews haul them out of town. They shook their fists at the mines and the works as if they had been the haunt of the devil. I couldn't bring myself to skulk. I rode Nell right down to the station and sat there till the last carload pulled out with the men and women standing together on the platform to curse me."

"Karl! How could you? It's a marvel you weren't shot."

"Too easy a mark, I reckon."

"And Elena?"

"Lifted on board by two rival suitors. She didn't even look at me." He drew a long breath. "I was guiltless in that, Honora. You've stood by through everything, and you've made a cult of believing in me, and I want you to know that, so far as Elena was concerned, you were right to do it. I may have been a fool—but not consciously—not consciously."

"I know it. I believe you."

A silence fell between them while Honora set the hot supper on the table and put the tea to draw.

"It's very still," he said finally. "But the stillness here is nothing to what it is down where my village stood. I've made a frightful mess of things, Honora."

"No," she said, "you built up; another has torn down. You must get more workmen. There may be a year or two of depression, but you're going to win out, Karl."

"I've fought a good many fights first and last, Honora,—fights you know nothing about. Some of them have been with men, some with ideas, some of the worst ones with myself. It would be a long story and a strange one if I were to tell it all."

"I dare say it would."

"I suppose I must seem very strange to a civilized woman like you, or—or your friend, Kate Barrington."

"You seem very like a brave man, Karl, and an interesting one."

"But I'm tired, Honora,—extraordinarily tired. I don't feel like fighting. Quiet and rest are what I'm longing for, and I'm to begin all over again, it appears. I've got to struggle up again almost from the bottom."

"Come to supper, Karl. Never mind all that. We have food and we have shelter. No doubt we shall sleep. Things like that deserve our gratitude. Accept these blessings. There are many who lack them."

Suddenly he threw up his arms with a despairing gesture.

"Oh, it isn't myself, Honora, that I'm grieving for! It's those hot-headed, misguided, wayward fellows of mine! They've left the homes I tried to help them win, they've followed a self-seeking, half-mad, wholly vicious agitator, and their lives, that I meant to have flow on so smoothly, will be troubled and wasted. I know so well what will happen! And then, their hate! It hangs over me like a cloud! I'm not supposed to be sensitive. I'm looked on as a swaggering, reckless, devil-may-care fellow with a pretty good heart and a mighty sure aim; but I tell you, cousin, among them, they've taken the life out of me."

"It's your dark hour, Karl. You're standing the worst of it right now. To-morrow things will look better."

"I couldn't ask a woman to come out here and stand amid this ruin with me, Honora. You know I couldn't. The only person who would be willing to share my present life with me would be some poor, devil-driven creature like Elena—come to think of it, even she wouldn't! She's off and away with a lover at each elbow!"

"Here!" said Honora imperatively. She held a plate toward him laden with steaming food.

He arose, took it, seated himself, and tried a mouthful, but he had to wash it down with water.

"I'm too tired," he said. "Really, Honora, you'll have to forgive me."

She got up then and lighted the lamp in his bedroom.

"Thank you," he said. "Rest is what I need. It was odd they didn't shoot, wasn't it? I thought every moment that they would."

"You surely didn't wish that they would, Karl?"

"No." He paused for a moment at the door. "No—only everything appeared to be so futile. My bad deeds never turned on me as my good ones have done. It makes everything seem incoherent. What—what would a woman like Miss Barrington make of all that—of harm coming from good?"

"I don't know," said Honora, rather sharply. "She hasn't written. I told her all the trouble we were in,—the danger and the distress,—but she hasn't written a word."

"Why should she?" demanded Wander. "It's none of her concern. I suppose she thinks a fool is best left with his folly. Good-night, cousin. You're a good woman if ever there was one. What should I have done without you?"

Honora smiled wanly. He seemed to have forgotten that it was she who would have fared poorly without him.

She closed up the house for the night, looking out in the bright moonlight to see that all was quiet. For many days and nights she had been continually on the outlook for lurking figures, but now she was inclined to believe that she had overestimated the animosity of the strikers. After all, try as they might, they could bring no accusations against the man who, hurt to the soul by their misunderstanding of him, was now laying his tired head upon his pillow.

All was very still. The moonlight touched to silver the snow upon the mountains; the sound of the leaping river was like a distant flute; the wind was rising with long, wavelike sounds. Honora lingered in the doorway, looking and listening. Her heart was big with pity—pity for that disheartened man whose buoyancy and self-love had been so deeply wounded, pity for those wandering, angry, aimless men and women who might have rested secure in his guardianship; pity for all the hot, misguided hearts of men and women. Pity, too, for the man with the most impetuous heart of them all, who wandered in some foreign land with a woman whose beauty had been his lure and his undoing. Yes, she had been given grace in those days, when she seemed to stand face to face with death, to pity even David and Mary!

She walked with a slow firm step up to her room, holding her head high. She had learned trust as well as compassion. She trusted Karl and the issue of his sorrow. She even trusted the issue of her own sorrow, which, a short time before, had seemed so shameful. She threw wide her great windows, and the wind and the moonlight filled her chamber.

* * * * *

Two days later Karl Wander and Honora Fulham rode together to the village, now dismantled and desolate.

"I remember," said Karl, "what a boyish pride I took in the little town at first, Honora, to have built it, and had it called after me and all. Such silly fools as men are, trying to perpetuate themselves by such childish methods."

"Perpetuation is an instinct with us," said Honora calmly, "Immortality is our greatest hope. I'm so thankful I have my children, Karl. They seem to carry one's personality on, you know, no matter how different they actually may be from one's self."

"Oh, yes," said Karl, with a short sigh, "you're right there. You've a beautiful brace of babies, Honora. I believe I'll have to ask you to appoint me their guardian. I must have some share in them. It will give me a fresh reason for going on."

"Are you a trifle short of reasons for going on, Karl?" Honora asked gently, averting her look so that she might not seem to be watching him.

"Yes, I am," he admitted frankly. "Although, now that the worst of my chagrin is over at having failed so completely in the pet scheme of my life, I can feel my fighting blood getting up again. I'm going to make a success of the town of Wander yet, my cousin, and those three mines that lie there so silently are going to hum in the old way. You'll see a string of men pouring in and out of those gates yet, take my word for it. But as for me, I proceed henceforth on a humbler policy."

"Humbler? Isn't it humble to be kind, Karl? That's what you were first and last—kind. You were forever thinking of the good of your people."

"It was outrageously insolent of me to do it, my cousin. Who am I that I should try to run another man's affairs? How should I know what is best for him—isn't he the one to be the judge of that? patronage, patronage, that's what they can't stand—that's what natural overmen like myself with amiable dispositions try to impose on those we think inferior to ourselves. We can't seem to comprehend that the way to make them grow is to leave them alone."

"Don't be bitter, Karl."

"I'm not bitter, Honora. I'm rebuked. I'm literal. I'm instructed. I have brought you down here to talk the situation over with me. I can get men in plenty to advise me, but I want to know what you think about a number of things. Moreover, I want you to tell me what you imagine Miss Barrington would think about them."

"Why don't you write and ask her?" asked Honora. She herself was hurt at not having heard from Kate.

"I gave her notice that I wasn't going to write any more," said Karl sharply. "I couldn't have her counting on me when I wasn't sure that I was a man to be counted on."

"Oh," cried Honora, enlightened. "That's the trouble, is it? But still, I should think she'd write to me. I told her of all you and I were going through together—" she broke off suddenly. Her words presented to her for the first time some hint of the idea she might have conveyed to Kate. She smiled upon her cousin beautifully, while he stared at her, puzzled at her unexpected radiance.

"Kate loves him," she decided, looking at the man beside her with fresh appreciation of his power. She was the more conscious of it that she saw him now in his hour of defeat and perceived his hope and ingenuity, his courage and determination gathering together slowly but steadily for a fresh effort.

"Dear old Kate," she mused. "Karl rebuffed her in his misery, and I misled her. If she hadn't cared she'd have written anyway. As it is—"

But Karl was talking.

"Now there's the matter of the company store," he was saying. "What would Miss Barrington think about the ethical objections to that?"

Honora turned her attention to the matter in hand, and when, late that afternoon, the two rode their jaded horses home, a new campaign had been planned. Within a week Wander left for Denver. Honora heard nothing from him for a fortnight. Then a wire came. He was returning to Wander with five hundred men.

"They're hoboes—pick-ups," he told Honora that night as the two sat together at supper. "Long-stake and short-stake men—down-and-outs—vagrants—drunkards, God knows what. I advertised for them. 'Previous character not called into question,' was what I said. 'Must open up my mines. Come and work as long as you feel like it.' I haven't promised them anything and they haven't promised me anything, except that I give them wages for work. A few of them have women with them, but not more than one in twenty. I don't know what kind of a mess the town of Wander will be now, but at any rate, it's sticking to its old programme of 'open shop.' Any one who wants to take these fellows away from me is quite welcome to do it. No affection shall exist between them and me. There are no obligations on either side. But they seem a hearty, good-natured lot, and they said they liked my grit."

Something that was wild and reckless in all of the Wanders flashed in Honora's usually quiet eyes.

"A band of brigands," she laughed. "Really, Karl, I think you'll make a good chief for them. There's one thing certain, they'll never let you patronize them."

"I shan't try," declared Karl. "They needn't look to me for benefits of any sort. I want miners."

Honora chuckled pleasantly and looked at her cousin from the corner of her eye. She had her own ideas about his ability to maintain such detachment.

He amused her a little later by telling her how he had formed a town government and he described the men he had appointed to office.

"They take it seriously, too," he declared. "We have a ragamuffin government and regulations that would commend themselves to the most judicious. 'Pon my soul, Honora, though it's only play, I swear some of these fellows begin to take on little affectations of self-respect. We're going to have a council meeting to-morrow. You ought to come down."

That gave Honora a cue. She was wanting something more to do than to look after the house, now that servants had again been secured. It occurred to her that it might be a good idea to call on the women down at Wander. She was under no error as to their character. Broken-down followers of weak men's fortunes,—some with the wedding ring and some without,—they nevertheless were there, flesh and blood, and possibly heart and soul. Not the ideal but the actual commended itself to her these days. Kate had taught her that lesson. So, quite simply, she went among them.

"Call on me when you want anything," she said to them. "I'm a woman who has seen trouble, and I'd like to be of use to any of you if trouble should come your way. Anyhow, trouble or no trouble, let us be friends."

In her simple dress, with her quiet, sad face and her deep eyes, she convinced them of sincerity as few women could have done. They bade her enter their doors and sit in their sloven homes amid the broken things the Italians had left behind them.

"Why not start a furniture shop?" asked Honora. "We could find some men here who could make plain furniture. I'll see Mr. Wander about it."

That was a simple enough plan, and she had no trouble in carrying it out. She got the women to cooperate with her in other ways. Among them they cleaned up the town, set out some gardens, and began spending their men's money for necessaries.

"Do watch out," warned Karl; "you'll get to be a Lady Bountiful—"

"And you a benevolent magnate—"

"Damned if I will! Well, play with your hobo brides if you like, Honora, but don't look for gratitude or rectitude or any beatitude."

"Not I," declared Honora. "I'm only amusing myself."

They kept insisting to each other that they had no higher intention. They were hilarious over their failures and they persisted in taking even their successes humorously. At first the "short-stake men" drifted away, but presently they began to drift back again. They liked it at Wander,—liked being mildly and tolerantly controlled by men of their own sort,—men with some vested authority, however, and a reawakened perception of responsibility. Wander was their town—the hoboes' own city. It was one of the few places where something was expected of the hobo. Well, a hobo was a man, wasn't he? The point was provable. A number of Karl Wander's vagrants chose to prove that they were not reprobates. Those who had been "down and out" by their own will, or lack of it, as well as those whom misfortune had dogged, began to see in this wild village, in the heart of these rich and terrific mountains, that wonderful thing, "another chance."

"Would Miss Barrington approve of us now?" Karl would sometimes ask Honora.

"Why should she?" Honora would retort. "We're not in earnest. We're only fighting bankruptcy and ennui."

"That's it," declared Karl. "By the way, I must scrape up some more capital somewhere, Honora. I've borrowed everything I could lay my hands on in Denver. Now I've written to some Chicago capitalists about my affairs and they show a disposition to help me out. They'll meet in Denver next week. Perhaps I shall bring them here. I've told them frankly what my position was. You see, if I can swing things for six months more, the tide will turn. Do you think my interesting rabble will stick to me?"

"Don't count on them," said Honora. "Don't count on anybody or anything. But if you like to take your chance, do it. It's no more of a gamble than anything else a Colorado man is likely to invest in."

"You don't think much of us Colorado men, do you, my cousin?"

"I don't think you are quite civilized," she said. Then a twinge of memory twisted her face. "But I don't care for civilized men. I like glorious barbarians like you, Karl."

"Men who are shot at from behind bushes, eh? If I ever have to hide in a cave, Honora, will you go with me?"

"Yes, and load the guns."

He flashed her a curious look; one which she could not quite interpret. Was he thinking that he would like her to keep beside him? For a second, with a thrill of something like fear, this occurred to her. Then by some mysterious process she read his mind, and she read it aright. He was really thinking how stirring a thing life would seem if he could hear words like that from the lips of Kate Barrington.



XXVII

It had been a busy day for Honora. She had been superintending the house-cleaning and taking rather an aggressive part in it herself. She rejoiced that her strength had come back to her, and she felt a keen satisfaction in putting it forth in service of the man who had taken her into community of interest with him when, as he had once put it, she was bankrupted of all that had made her think herself rich.

Moreover, she loved the roomy, bare house, with its uncurtained windows facing the mountains, and revealing the spectacles of the day and night. Because of them she had learned to make the most of her sleepless hours. The slow, majestic procession in the heavens, the hours of tumult when the moon struggled through the troubled sky, the dawns with their swift, wide-spreading clarity, were the finest diversions she ever had known.

She remembered how, in the old days, she and David had patronized the unspeakably puerile musical comedies under the impression that they "rested" them. Now, she was able to imagine nothing more fatiguing.

They had an early supper, for Karl was leaving for a day or two in Denver and had to be driven ten miles to the station. He was unusually silent, and Honora was well pleased that he should be so, for, though she had kept herself so busily occupied all the day, she had not been able to rid herself of the feeling that a storm of memories was waiting to burst upon her. The feeling had grown as the hours of the day went on, and she at once dreaded and longed for the solitude she should have when Karl was gone. She was relieved to find that the little girls were weary and quite ready for their beds. She watched Karl drive away, standing at the door for a few moments till she heard his clear voice calling a last good-bye as the station wagon swept around the pinon grove; then she locked the house and went to her own room. A fire had been laid for her, and she touched a match to the kindling, lighted her lamp, and took up some sewing. But she found herself too weary to sew, and, moreover, this assailant of recollection was upon her again.

She had once seen the Northern lights when the many-hued glory seemed to be poured from vast, invisible pitchers, till it spread over the floor of heaven and spilled earthward. Her memories had come upon her like that.

Then she faced the fact she had been trying all day not to recognize.

It was David's birthday!

She admitted it now, and even had the courage to go back over the ways they had celebrated the day in former years; at first she held to the old idea that these recollections made her suffer, but presently she perceived that it was not so. Had her help come from the hills, as Karl had told her it would?

She sat so still that she could hear the ashes falling in the fireplace—so still that the ticking of her watch on the dressing-table teased her ears. She seemed to be listening for something—for something beautiful and solemn. And by and by the thing she had been waiting for came.

It swept into the house as if all the doors and windows had been thrown wide to receive it. It was as invisible as the wind, as scentless as a star, as complete as birth or death. It was peace—or forgiveness—or, in a white way, perhaps it was love.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet.

"David!" she cried. "David! Oh, I believe I understand!"

She went to her desk, and, as if she were compelled, began to write. Afterward she found she had written this:—

"DEAR DAVID:—

"It is your birthday, and I, who am so used to sending you a present, cannot be deterred now. Oh, David, my husband, you who fathered my children, you, who, in spite of all, belong to me, let me tell you how I have at last come, out of the storm of angers and torments of the past year, into a sheltered room where you seem to sit waiting to hear me say, 'I forgive you.'

"That is my present to you—my forgiveness. Take it from me with lifted hands as if it were a sacrament; feed on it, for it is holy bread. Now we shall both be at peace, shall we not? You will forgive me, too, for all I did not do.

"We are willful children, all of us, and night over-takes us before we have half learned our lessons.

"Oh, David—"

She broke off suddenly. Something cold seemed to envelop her—cold as a crevasse and black as death. She gave a strangled cry, wrenched the collar from her throat, fighting in vain against the mounting waves that overwhelmed her.

Long afterward, she shuddered up out of her unconsciousness. The fire had burned itself out; the lamp was sputtering for lack of oil. Somewhere in the distance a coyote called. She was dripping with cold sweat, and had hardly strength to find the thing that would warm her and to get off her clothes and creep into bed.

At first she was afraid to put out the light. It seemed as if, should she do so, the very form and substance of Terror would come and grip her. But after a time, slowly, wave upon wave, the sea of Peace rolled over her—submerging her. She reached out then and extinguished the light and let herself sink down, down, through the obliterating waters of sleep—waters as deep, as cold, as protecting as the sea.

"Into the Eternal Arms," she breathed, not knowing why.

But when she awakened the next morning in response to the punctual gong, she remembered that she had said that.

"Into the Eternal Arms."

She came down to breakfast with the face of one who has eaten of the sacred bread of the spirit.

* * * * *

The next two days passed vaguely. A gray veil appeared to hang between her and the realities, and she had the effect of merely going through the motions of life. The children caused her no trouble. They were, indeed, the most normal of children, and Mrs. Hays, their old-time nurse, had reduced their days to an agreeable system. Honora derived that peculiar delight from them which a mother may have when she is not obliged to be the bodily servitor and constant attendant of her children. She was able to feel the poetry of their childhood, seeing them as she did at fortunate and picturesque moments; and though their lives were literally braided into her own,—were the golden threads in her otherwise dun fabric of existence,—she was thankful that she did not have the task of caring for them. It would have been torture to have been tied to their small needs all day and every day. She liked far better the heavier work she did about the house, her long walks, her rides to town, and, when Karl was away, her supervision of the ranch. Above all, there was her work at the village. She could return from that to the children for refreshment and for spiritual illumination. In the purity of their eyes, in the liquid sweetness of their voices, in their adorable grace and caprice, there was a healing force beyond her power to compute.

During these days, however, her pleasure in them was dim, though sweet. She had been through a mystic experience which left a profound influence upon her, and she was too much under the spell of it even to make an effort to shake it off. She slept lightly and woke often, to peer into the velvet blackness of the night and to listen to the deep silence. She was as one who stands apart, the viewer of some tremendous but uncomprehended event.

The third day she sent the horses for Karl, and as twilight neared, he came driving home. She heard his approach and threw open the door for him. He saw her with a halo of light about her, curiously enlarged and glorified, and came slowly and heavily toward her, holding out both hands. At first she thought he was ill, but as his hands grasped hers, she saw that he was not bringing a personal sorrow to her but a brotherly compassion. And then she knew that something had happened to David. She read his mind so far, almost as if it had been a printed page, and she might have read further, perhaps, if she had waited, but she cried out:—

"What is it? You've news of David?"

"Yes," he said. "Come in."

"You've seen the papers?" he asked when they were within the house. She shook her head.

"I haven't sent over for the mail since you left, Karl. I seemed to like the silence."

"There's silence enough in all patience!" he cried. "Sixteen hundred voices have ceased."

"I don't understand."

"The Cyclops has gone down—a new ship, the largest on the sea."

"Why, that seems impossible."

"Not when there are icebergs floating off the banks and when the bergs carry submerged knives of ice. One of them gored the ship. It was fatal."

"How terrible!" For a second's space she had forgotten the possible application to her. Then the knowledge came rushing back upon her.

She put her hands over her heart with the gesture of one wounded.

"David?" she gasped.

Karl nodded.

"He was on it—with Mary. They were coming back to America. He had been given the Norden prize, as you know,—the prize you earned for him. I think he was to take a position in some Eastern university. He and Mary had gone to their room, the paper says, when the shock came. They ran out together, half-dressed, and Mary asked a steward if there was anything the matter. 'Yes, madam,' he said quietly, just like that, 'I believe we are sinking.' You'll read all about it there in those papers. Mary was interviewed. Well, they lowered the boats. There were enough for about a third of the passengers. They had made every provision for luxury, but not nearly enough for safety. The men helped the women into the boats and sent them away. Then they sat down together, folded their arms, and died like gentlemen, with the good musicians heartening them with their music to the last. The captain went down with his ship, of course. All of the officers did that. Almost all of the men did it, too. It was very gallant in its terrible way, and David was among the most gallant. The papers mention him particularly. He worked till the last helping the others off, and then he sat down and waited for the end."

Honora turned on her cousin a face in which all the candles of her soul were lit.

"Oh, Karl, how wonderful! How beautiful!"

He said nothing for amazement.

"In that half-hour," she went on, speaking with such swiftness that he could hardly follow her, "all his thoughts streamed off across the miles of sea and land to me! I felt the warmth of them all about me. It was myself he was thinking of. He came back to me, his wife! I was alone, waiting for something, I couldn't tell what. Then I remembered it was his birthday, and that I should be sending him a gift. So I sent him my forgiveness. I wrote a letter, but for some reason I have not sent it. It is here, the letter!" She drew it from her bosom. "See, the date and hour is upon it. Read it."

Karl arose and held the letter in a shaking hand. He made a calculation.

"The moments correspond," he said. "You are right; his spirit sought yours."

"And then the—the drowning, Karl. I felt it all, but I could not understand. I died and was dead for a long time, but I came up again, to live. Only since then life has been very curious. I have felt like a ghost that missed its grave. I've been walking around, pretending to live, but really half hearing and half seeing, and waiting for you to come back and explain."

"I have explained," said Karl with infinite gentleness. "Mary is saved. She was taken up with others by the Urbania, and friends are caring for her in New York. She gave a very lucid interview; a feeling one, too. She lives, but the man she ruined went down, for her sake."

"No," said Honora, "he went down for my sake. He went down for the sake of his ideals, and his ideals were mine. Oh, how beautiful that I have forgiven him—and how wonderful that he knew it, and that I—" She spoke as one to whom a great happiness had come. Then she wavered, reached out groping hands, and fell forward in Karl's arms.

* * * * *

For days she lay in her bed. She had no desire to arise. She seemed to dread interruption to her passionate drama of emotion, in which sorrow and joy were combined in indeterminate parts. From her window she could see the snow-capped peaks of the Williston range, rising with immortal and changeful beauty into the purple heavens. As she watched them with incurious eyes, marking them in the first light of the day, when their iridescence made them seem as impalpable as a dream of heaven; eyeing them in the noon-height, when their sides were the hue of ruddy granite; watching them at sunset when they faded from swimming gold to rose, from rose to purple, they seemed less like mountains than like those fair and fatal bergs of the Northern Atlantic. She had read of them, though she had not seen them. She knew how they sloughed from the inexhaustible ice-cap of Greenland's bleak continent and marched, stately as an army, down the mighty plain of the ocean. Fair beyond word were they, with jeweled crevasses and mother-of-pearl changefulness, indomitable, treacherous, menacing. Honora, closing weary eyes, still saw them sailing, sailing, white as angels, radiant as dawn, changing, changing, lovely and cold as death.

Mind and gaze were fixed upon their enchantment. She would not think of certain other things—of that incredible catastrophe, that rent ship, crashing to its doom, of that vast company tossed upon the sea, of those cries in the dark. No, she shut her eyes and her ears to those things! They seemed to be the servitors at the doors of madness, and she let them crook their fingers at her in vain. Now and then, when she was not on guard, they swarmed upon her, whispering stories of black struggle, of heart-breaking separation of mother and child, of husband and wife. Sometimes they told her how Mary—so luxurious, so smiling, so avid of warmth and food and kisses—had shivered in that bleak wind, as she sat coatless, torn from David's sheltering embrace. They had given her elfish reminders of how soft, how pink, how perfumed was that woman's tender flesh. Then as she looked the blue eyes glazed with agony, the supple body grew rigid with cold, and down, down, through miles of water, sank the man they both had loved.

No, no, it was better to watch the bergs, those glistering, fair, white ships of death! Yes, there from the window she seemed to see them! How the sun glorified them! Was the sun setting, then? Had there been another day?

"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow—"

Darkness was falling. But even in the darkness she saw the ice-ships slipping down from that great frozen waste, along the glacial rivers, past the bleak lisiere, into the bitter sea, and on down, down to meet that other ship—that ship bearing its mighty burden of living men—and to break it in unequal combat.

Oh, could she never sleep! Would those white ships never reach port!

Did she hear Karl say he had telegraphed for Kate Barrington? But what did it matter? Neither Kate nor Karl, strong and kind as they were, could stem the tide that bore those ships along the never-quiet seas.



XXVIII

So Kate was coming!

He had cravenly rebuffed her, and she had borne the rebuff in silence. Yet now that he needed her, she was coming. Ah, that was what women meant to men. They were created for the comforting of them. He always had known it, but he had impiously doubted them—doubted Her. Because fortune had turned from him, he had turned from Her—from Kate Barrington. He had imagined that she wanted more than he could give; whereas, evidently, all she ever had wanted was to be needed. He had called. She had answered. It had been as swift as telegraphy could make it. And now he was driving to the station to meet her.

Life, it appeared, was just as simple as that. A man, lost in the darkness, could cry for a star to guide him, and it would come. It would shine miraculously out of the heavens, and his path would be made plain. It seemed absurd that the horses should be jogging along at their usual pace over the familiar road. Why had they not grown shining wings? Why was the old station wagon not transformed, by the mere glory of its errand, into a crystal coach? But, no, the horses went no faster because they were going on this world-changing errand. The resuscitated village, with the American litter heaped on the Italian dirt, looked none the less slovenly because She was coming into it in a few minutes. The clock kept its round; the sun showed its usual inclination toward the west. But notwithstanding this torpidity, She was coming, and that day stood apart from all other days.

That it was Honora's desperate need which she was answering, in no way lessened the value of her response to him. His need and Honora's were indissoluble now; it was he who had called, and it was not to Honora alone that she was coming with healing in her hands.

He saw her as she leaped from the train,—tall, alert, green-clad,—and he ran forward, sweeping his Stetson from his head. Their hands met—clung.

"You!" he said under his breath.

She laughed into his eyes.

"No, you!" she retorted.

He took her bags and they walked side by side, looking at each other as if their eyes required the sight.

"How is she?" asked Kate.

"Very bad."

"What is it?"

"The doorway to madness."

"You've had a specialist?"

"Yes. He wanted to take her to a sanatorium. I begged him to wait—to let you try. How could I let her go out from my door to be cast in with the lost?"

"I suppose it was David's death that caused it."

"Oh, yes. What else could it be?"

"Then she loved him—to the end."

"And after it, I am sure."

He led the way to the station wagon and helped her in; then brought her luggage on his own shoulder.

"Oh," she cried in distress. "Do you have to be your own stevedore? I don't like to have you doing that for me."